America’s representative form of Constitutional democracy is on the verge of breaking down because of political corruption at the highest levels and the concurrent decline in civility and growing mob behavior.

Fundamental and deep division prevents government from fixing itself. But we the people can play a decisive role in turning things around by voting in the mid-term elections just days away. First some background.

By the end of the eight-year Obama administration, the Democratic Party leadership found itself with the two-fold challenge of a weak presidential candidate in Hillary Clinton and ineffective and unpopular public policies. At the same time, a significant number of high-ranking U.S. government officials and their subordinates in the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA—most appointed during the Obama administration—decided collectively to take unusual action to assist Hillary. First, the Hillary Clinton email investigation by the FBI was derailed, leading to her exoneration. Next, this cabal quietly weaponized the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA to deceive the FISA court with the “Steele dossier” false narrative about candidate Donald Trump. This prompted the FISA court to authorize spying on the Trump team and it facilitated the leaking of scandalous information to the press—to sink Trump’s candidacy before the November 2016 election.

When those efforts failed and Trump was elected, the cabal became more determined. They needed to cover their tracks and take more steps to undermine the now duly elected president — actions that were tantamount to a coup d’état. These actions, which included continuing to deceive the FISA court to authorize internal spying and hatching the Mueller investigation, sent a message to Democratic Party elites that it’s OK to disrespect the results of a legitimate presidential election. And it sent a message to rank and file Democrats that it’s OK to break the law and engage in mob behavior to verbally assault and disrupt the lives of Republican Party figures.

Hillary Clinton recently said that “civility can start” if Democrats “are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate.” Her former vice presidential running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, publicly advocated to “fight in the courts, fight in the streets.” Obama’s attorney general Eric Holder recently said of Republicans: “When they go low, we kick them.” Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, who may seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has called for people to “get up in the face of some congress people.” In similar fashion, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, has gotten endless media replay of her advocacy that, “If you see anybody from that [Trump] Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. You push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!”

Even though these are the ways of banana republics–which almost always end in tyranny—Democrat leadership apparently thinks it will be different if they can get away with it and prevail. But substantively, there is no denying that these actions repudiate core principals of American tolerance, the Constitution and the rule of law.

And for those who can’t fathom what mob rule would look like in the United States, the 11th hour ambush of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh reveals all you need to know: unscrupulous tactics of personal destruction exploiting the #MeToo movement to set the stage for presumption of guilt ginned up by media sensationalism that feeds mob rule. Do we really want to substitute the Constitution’s 10 Bill of Rights for Saul Alinsky’s 10 Rules for Radicals, which simply boil down to “the ends justify the means”?

Regardless of party affiliation, citizens need to take a stand now, and voting remains the surest way to send a clear message. It’s time to repudiate mob rule and high level corruption—the latter having severely harmed the FBI, the Justice Department, the Senate, the Supreme Court and Constitutional due process.

Although not on the ballot, the most important issue this mid-term election is less the candidates, and more where political parties stand on rule by Constitutional Law vs. rule by deep state elites and mob rule. Make that determination and get out and vote!

Scott Powell, an alum of Colby College, is now senior fellow at Discovery Institute. Email him at scottp@discovery.org.